Elderly-onset IBS?

[kitchenassistance]

For the last maybe three years, DM (mid/late 70s) has been having lots of stomach problems. She had a period where she was getting horrendous bloating every time she ate, and more recently she's been having bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea (perhaps a day or two every fortnight where she's in bed all day feeling rubbish). No prior history of stomach problems or allergies whatsoever.

The doctors seem a bit stumped. She's had various tests (including coeliac, endoscopy etc), but they can't find a cause. One doctor suggested IBS and recommended giving up gluten - this did seem to help for a while, but wasnt totally conclusive.

The situation is compounded by other issues - she's suffering from insomnia and anxiety, and we think she may have the beginnings of dementia, as she's really struggling with her memory recently. It also doesn't help that she doesn't really 'believe' in food intolerances. All of that means that she's not only very reluctant to change her diet, she's also not very capable of fully understanding/ remembering how to do it.

I just wondered if anyone else had experienced this. Is it possible to just suddenly develop IBS or similar in later life? Does this sound like it might be that or something similar? Any tips for managing it?

Could she be eating out of date food or not cooking/storing it properly? As you said she might have the beginnings of dementia.

My mum developed bloating / diarrhoea in later life. With hindsight I link it to the change of diet. She moved from being a 'cook everything from scratch' person with lots of fresh veg to someone that used ready meals from M&S.
The change was made with the best possible motive - trying to keep her independent in her own home for as long as possible.
She was advised to add golden flax seeds to her meals twice a day - this definitely helped with the diarrhoea (which was actually diagnosed by a bowel consultant as constipation).

Lactose intolerance often occurs as people get older. Lactose is the sugar in animal milk and as people get older they often produce less of the enzyme needed to digest it. You can get lactose free milk and cheese.

Thanks all for the ideas. I'm pretty sure its not down to eating out of date food - her cognitive decline is still fairly mild, and she lives with my dad who's pretty with it. I'll definitely have a snoop in the fridge next time I'm there, though.

Interesting re the lactose - I'll work on her trying to avoid that as well as the gluten, to see if it helps. It's so hard though. She doesn't believe that her symptoms are diet related, and her memory problems make it hard for her to spot patterns. I've tried to persuade her to keep a food diary, but she thinks anything like that is modern nonsense. She basically sees herself as someone who has the constitution of an ox - which she used to, but now she really really doesn't.